


Though All the World My Choice Deride

by jesterlady



Category: Roswell (TV 1999)
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Flashes, Alien/Human Relationships, Aliens, Episode Related, Episode: s01e16 Sexual Healing, Extended Scene, F/M, Making Out, Non-Sexual Intimacy, One Shot, Season/Series 01, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterlady/pseuds/jesterlady
Summary: Flashes are the order of the day and Michael has to figure it out all on his own.





	Though All the World My Choice Deride

Michael is minding his own business when Max brings the whole thing up. He’s even at school, preparing to learn like a good human drone. Of course, then Max decides to start going on and on about sensations and flashes and memories and Michael begins to feel uncomfortable. Look, physical contact is all well and good and he enjoys it thoroughly but he doesn’t want to dissect it afterwards or start talking about how it feels or what kind of a connection is being made. Connections mean attachments to earth and that is something he can’t afford.

Still, there’s something about what Max is describing…

“Did anything like that ever happen to Maria when you two...” Max starts to ask but Michael interrupts him.

“No, Maxwell, let me assure you, you have not experienced anything I have not experienced many times or caused to be experienced.”

“Then how can you call yourself my friend?” Max asks, grinning.

“What?” Michael says, confused. 

“A friend wouldn't have kept something like that to himself.”

Max goes off to learn biology and Michael is left thinking, one of his least favorite activities. Maybe this is something different, something that happened because of Max’s alien genetics. Of course, that begs the question, is it just a Max thing? Or could it happen to him? He and Maria basically wore each other’s lips off for a whole week before they broke up. If something was going to happen, shouldn’t it have happened?

Michael sits himself down in the middle of the bleachers, surrendering himself to the inevitable, that he is going to brood on the question. Naturally that particular train of thought leads to thoughts of Maria and he is trying his best to be rid of those. She has a bad habit of creeping into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. Maybe it’s his fault because he can’t seem to make himself stay away from her. Breaking up with her hadn’t been enough. No, he has to go and do things like get beat up to save her mom’s business and come crying to her door in the middle of the night. He isn’t going to think about that night, he refuses.

“Oh, Michael. Hi.”

Maria. She’s right in front of him, of course she is. He hasn’t talked to her much since that night. He can’t tell what she’s thinking. Is she remembering how it felt to sleep in the same bed? Because he, unfortunately, has extremely vivid memories of doing so and can’t stop thinking about them. Or is she remembering how broken he’d been or thinking about what Hank had done? Neither are acceptable alternatives. See, this is why he needs to stay away from her.

“Hey,” he replies.

That’s casual enough, right? That doesn’t scream…hey, please let me kiss you again and never stop, right? 

“Did you hear?” she asks.

“The Max-Liz thing, with the flashes?” he replies. “She's your friend. What do you think?”

“That Max and Liz have discovered some new sensation?” she says, leaning against the railing. “It seems somewhat unlikely.” 

“Extremely unlikely,” he agrees.

They avoid each other’s gaze and then when that doesn’t work at making things less uncomfortable, look at each other for a minute and he can’t stop staring at her peach colored lips and remembering what they feel like against his own. Talking about sensations with Maria might be the most dangerous thing he can do with his time aside from waltzing into Valenti’s office and announcing he’s an alien.

He stands up, he’s not telling himself to stand up, he’s just doing it anyway. He walks down the bleachers toward her, he stands tall over her, and he’s too close to her now. He can smell her perfume, something like roses.

“Michael, what…?” she asks and he grabs her hand.

“Come on,” he says, yelling at himself inside his head to stop it, but to no avail.

He leads her to the equipment shack next to the track and pulls her inside. It’s in the name of science what he’s doing, not just because he can’t take another minute of not being able to touch her. Really, he promises.

He kisses her and she tastes exactly like he remembers. This is…this is what he misses. For a second he can’t remember why he ever stopped kissing her. She kisses him back and that is the only cue he needs to press in harder. He is trying to feel something here, after all, something alien. The longer they kiss the more he’ll be satisfied if he never does though. This is enough. 

Of course, that’s when the images start.

It’s hard to understand but suddenly he can so clearly see flashes of Maria. Maria adjusting the alien headband she wears at the Crash Down, Maria looking at her very first guitar, Maria on a swing set with Liz when they are younger, Maria as the cutest little girl, bending over to tie her blue shoelaces on bright red sneakers with her dog next to her.

Each image comes with a sensation, something he can’t understand. But he knows something of what the Maria in each flash is feeling, what she is thinking, who she is in that moment. At least he thinks he does, but it happens so fast.

It is almost frightening and he pulls away from the feeling. It is too much. He can’t be that close to Maria. He wants to know about these flashes, to somehow prove to himself that he can feel them just as well as Max, but it is more connection than he was banking on.

He focuses solely on kissing Maria and feeling her body against his and that is enough; that is more than enough. His hands brush through her hair and down her neck and her own travel up and down his back.

“This feels good. This feels really good,” Maria murmurs against his lips. 

“Yeah,” he replies, still just kissing her.

“Oh. Oh, Michael,” she says.

“What?” he asks, still chasing her lips.

“I can't believe it,” she says.

“What? What did you see?” he asks, pulling back slightly.

“I saw...a cluster of stars...like shooting through space.” She bites her lip. “Um...this, like, incredible sunset, like near the rings of Saturn.” He kisses her softly. “Did you see anything?” she asks.

“Yeah, I saw you...as a little girl...trying to tie her shoelaces on her red sneakers,” he replies.

He can’t say anything more than that. It’s too intimate what he’s seen, what she has unconsciously shown him. He’d have to feel human things then, he’d have to deal with human connections, and he just can’t.

“You're kidding,” she says in delight. “The red sneakers?”

He nods and dives back in for another kiss to avoid talking about it or talking about what she’s seeing. Something about what she says, it inspires pride in him, but it makes him slightly uncomfortable to know that she can see anything inside of him. He doesn’t want anyone digging around in there, it’s too dangerous. At least she’s only seeing cosmic things he isn’t even aware of.

They keep kissing until they hear noises outside the shed and some girls come in looking for something and then start giggling when they see the two of them inside, lips swollen, hair mussed, and clearly involved in a heavy make out session.

Michael leads Maria back outside and they stare awkwardly at each other for a minute.

“I, uh, I gotta go,” he says.

“Me too,” she says quickly.

They go their separate ways and Michael silently curses in his head. Maybe that proves something to himself, but he…he just doesn’t think it’s a good idea to start this back up again with her, no matter how much he wants to.

He’ll have to say something and then she’ll get pissed at him again. Why does he keep doing this?

But later when he’s at his place with Max and Isabel (his own place, now that is the sole positive in his life right now even if Isabel is going overboard on trying to make it acceptable to her impossible standards), Max has to tell him all about how Liz is seeing flashes of the actual crash and that excites Michael’s interest again.

After all, finding out about his origins, that’s his number one goal in life.

“I see things from inside her head. Maybe she's seeing things stored deep inside me,” Max suggests.

“What do you see inside her head?” Michael asks, wondering if it’s the same as what he’s seen in Maria.

“I can't tell you. It's private,” Max insists.

“Since when do we keep secrets from each other? Maxwell, come on,” Michael pushes, ignoring the hypocrisy of his words.

“Do you have a juicer?” Isabel interrupts.

He points his finger at her.

“Isabel, you're pushing it,” he warns her.

He’s ecstatic about having his own place, too, but he is much more interested in finding out what happened with Liz than whether or not he has a juicer. As if he would have a juicer.

“They're Liz's personal thoughts, Michael...not secrets,” Max insists again.

That brings up another question, something that slightly haunts Michael. What if he wanted so badly to see something to prove he could that he’d imagined all that about Maria? It felt so real, so intimate, but maybe he had.

“Okay, yeah, so they're personal thoughts. How do you know they're real?” Michael asks.

“I'm not sure,” Max says.

“Can't you just ask her?” Isabel suggests.

“I don't want to embarrass her,” Max says.

So Saint Max, Michael thinks.

“Maxwell, if this is real...if there's any chance this is real; you owe it to us and to yourself to find out.” Michael pushes himself off the counter. “And in the meantime, I'm gonna pursue my own avenues.”

He has to, for the good of their species, and if a small part of him whispers it means he can be with Maria again, well, that’s again, just for the good of their species.

At school the next day he wastes no time in pulling her into the eraser room.

Kissing her again is familiar and amazing and he just lets himself enjoy it for a moment. Of course, he is here trying to figure things out and he deepens the kiss, letting his hands creep along the bare skin under her shirt. He loves her skin, it’s so soft under his fingers, and he itches to touch as much of it as possible.

He feels it again, the flash into her mind, her memories. He sees her with her dog and the sneakers again, more of it this time, and he wonders why it is repeating. Then he sees her standing outside, hands on hips, yelling at someone, probably aged around five. Yup, that’s his Maria. He sees her with Alex and Liz laughing about something in a booth at the Crash Down. He sees her riding her bike, getting off the bus, blowing out candles on a cake, looking at him as they drive in her mom’s car. The ages and the years don’t seem to matter, everything shifts back and forth rapidly, and he feels the same accompanying sensations as before, the insights into her mind.

What’s most intriguing is how she looks and feels about him in her memories and he almost wishes he doesn’t know what she thinks about him. How mad she gets is all mixed up with a strange affection he doesn’t know how to understand or cope with. It’s a deep emotion, too deep for him, for broken, alien him.

“This feels really good,” Maria says, jolting him back to their kiss, and he wonders briefly why she’s used that exact phrase again.

“Uh-huh,” he says, continuing to kiss her.

“These visions...flashes, or whatever,” she continues.

“Uh-huh,” he says again, moving from her lips to her neck.

“I'm just, um...I'm not completely sure I've actually really had one.”

He stops kissing her. 

“What do you mean, you're not completely sure?” he asks, dreading the answer.

“Michael, I, um...I faked it. Okay?” she says.

He moves backward immediately and crosses his arms, barely even realizing he’s doing it.

“Why would you tell me that?” he asks.

“Why? Because I...I want us to be close,” she says.

Funny she should say that. Because here he is, worrying about being too close and what she might be seeing inside of him and she isn’t seeing anything.

“You think that makes us close?” he says, rubbing his hands on his face.

He has to get out of here. 

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“How do you expect me to react?” he asks.

“Like a person? Talk to me!” she demands.

“Yeah. Well, I could act like a person, but then I'd have to fake it,” he says viciously.

“You know, maybe if you weren't so defensive and you didn't shut down all the time...” she starts to say. 

“Then maybe what?” he asks.

“Maybe it would happen,” she suggests.

He can’t say exactly why her words hurt so much, but they do. He has about a split second to decide how to respond. In that time, he ignores the nagging voice inside that maybe she’s right, and decides to take the path of the least foreseeable pain.

“I lied to you, too...about the shoes,” he says.

She looks crushed and he doesn’t like putting that look on her face, but he doesn’t really see any other options. There’s no way he can explain to her what he’s seen. He doesn’t even understand why he saw things and she didn’t. He’s also pissed about her lies.

“Really? Cause I did have red sneakers,” she says hopefully. 

“Everybody's got red sneakers,” he says.

The bell rings and he leaves without another word.

He goes home that day and he fumes as he thinks about what Maria said. He tries to put aside the part of his ego that’s wounded that he couldn’t do something and focus on the alien part of the equation, but he doesn’t succeed very well.

Mostly he can’t get the look on her face when he left out of his mind. Why does he care so much? Why is this part of their alien powers at all? The two sides of the problem swirl around in his mind, beating each other for answers and not finding any.

Of course, Liz is apparently flashing more and more and she sees more and more each time she and Max get closer. It makes Michael sick but it also makes him think. Maybe this is how they were designed to figure out who they are. This is just the alien way. If that’s the case, well, then screw his own lines of research, it’s up to Max to get them the information and he pushes Max to it.

He and Isabel leave an awkward Liz and Max in Michael’s apartment and Michael wanders around town. Hey, he might not be able to give Maria flashes so she can get the information, but he does happen to have the only privately owned living space in their little group. Who says he can’t contribute?

He finds himself in front of the Crash Down and he idly wonders if Maria has a shift, but he isn’t ready to face her. He’s still too angry about what she did. Doesn’t she know telling a guy something like that is the fastest way to push him away?

He chooses a random car and sprawls across the hood, using it to look up. The stars are fainter with the city lights, unlike when he rides out into the desert, but still brighter than they’d be somewhere like New York. He plays his favorite game of picking the star that might be his planet, but it doesn’t comfort him like it had when he was a child. He’s so much closer to getting there and yet, yet he finds himself thinking about things down here. Blonde, short, soft-skinned, annoying, deceitful things down here.

“Michael,” comes Maria’s voice.

Of course she’s here. She’s always here.

“Hey,” he says as nonchalantly as possible.

“I was, uh...I was looking for you at your apartment, but I found Max and Liz instead,” Maria says awkwardly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she replies.

“They still there?” he asks.

“No, I just drove Liz home,” she says, gesturing.

“Great, I don't have to miss the hockey game,” he says and rolls off the car, heading back to his place, ignoring again the look on her face when he walks away from her.

It really is for her own good and he isn’t going to think about it anyway.

Except, of course, he does. He thinks about it a lot. He thinks about each of those Marias he’s seen, those funny, unique, adorable, pouty, emotional, weird Marias. He likes all of them.

Why can he see them and she can’t see any Michaels?

Maybe she’s right; he is shut down and defensive. In fact, the more he thinks about it, the more he knows that’s the reason. 

There is no doubt in his mind, Max is giving every cell of his body to Liz every time they kiss, but Michael is always going to hold something back. If it’s true, that Maria can access his memories, well, as desperately as he might want the memories of his origins, he can’t risk her seeing any of his human memories. No one can see those. He doesn’t even want to remember them himself.

That is just the way it has to be. No matter how this turns out. He can never let anyone see him, it’s too scary and he’s too broken.

That part, that part he settles on, but he doesn’t know how to explain it to her. In fact, talking about any of this with Maria is just likely to make her dig even further into his psyche. He still feels bad for hurting her and he still finds himself aching to hold her again. He spends the night thinking about what to do and he isn’t any closer to a decision the next day after Isabel informs him Max and Liz aren’t lost in some sexual haze out in the desert.

There’s a knock on his door and he shuffles over to it, half asleep. Maria stands on the other side, looking much smaller than usual, arms folded, sleep circles under her eyes.

“Max and Liz aren't...” she starts to say.

“I heard,” he says.

“Look, I just really need you not to be cold or mean. If that's impossible, you can just let me know.”

She’s trying, he has to admire that. He’s tired, though, tired of fighting what is apparently the inevitable. She will just keep coming and he can either give her what little he has to give, or he can crush her. Somehow he can’t bring himself to do the latter.

“You want to come in?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing toward it before clearing pillows and blankets off his couch.

“Thanks,” she says, sitting. “Can we talk about what happened?”

“Talk on,” he says, folding the blankets to give him something to do besides look at her.

She leans forward like she’s been practicing what she’s going to say and she probably has.

“I want you to know that what I said about you being all shut down and that's why I had to fake the flashes, that was...wrong and very unfair. If something went wrong, it was because of me.” He does look at her for that. “I'm the one who's scared. I mean, I fake all kinds of things all the time with everybody. It's just you were the first person I actually ever admitted it to.”

He can’t help himself; he sits down next to her.

“Well...thanks for saying that, but it's not really true,” he starts, rubbing his hands together nervously.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“It's not true about you being shut down all the time. I happen to know that for a fact,” he replies.

“Really? How?” she asks.

It’s now or never. He can at least give her this, this one piece, and hope she doesn’t dig too much deeper.

“Because you let me see you,” he tells her. “The red sneakers, Maria. One had a Kermit patch on it, and the shoelaces were blue, and you had your Dalmatian dog with you there, licking off your tears.” Her eyes widen and he rushes to finish. “And I saw a whole bunch of other stuff as well.” She almost laughs and he clears his throat, still slightly insecure about this. “Was I right?”

“Yeah.” She runs her hands through her hair. “Um...that dog died when I was, like, seven. Right after my father left.”

“Kinda rough,” he says lightly, trying not to put pressure on the moment.

“Yeah, I'd say so.” She turns to him earnestly. “I really didn't care about the stupid flashes. I just wanted us to be close.”

He doesn’t quite believe her. He believes she doesn’t care as much about that as she wants them to be close, but he can tell that not being able to share something so intimate with him when Liz can with Max, that part does hurt her.

He is hurting her. But he can’t help that, not right now.

So instead he shifts closer to her.

“Thanks,” he says, kissing her forehead and slinging his left arm around her.

She leans her head against his shoulder and they stay that way for a while. It is nice, he has to admit. He didn’t really expect to be able to sit with Maria and feel content just touching each other. He’s kind of always figured it would be either intense passion or her yakking his ear off. But this moment, well, it’s relaxing and he can use some relaxation. Things have been rather extreme lately.

He leans them back so they are against the couch’s back and she brings her feet up and puts one hand on his chest. He lets his arm curl up so his hand can idly touch her hair. 

He keeps thinking about the flashes and about how they work and while he doubts he’ll ever fully understand it, he thinks he has somewhat of a bead on them. They don’t work indiscriminately; they obey his command, his emotions, and his desires. He wants to see Maria and she wants him to see her. But he…he just doesn’t want her to see inside him. If she did, what she saw wouldn’t make her happy, it would make her look at him differently, and he doesn’t want that. So if this is going to work, and he is finally okay with the idea that he is now entangled with Maria for as long as he is on this earth, then it means he has to hold a part of himself back.

Her stomach rumbles and he laughs.

“Do you have anything to eat?” she asks sheepishly. “I kind of came over without eating.”

“You’re in luck,” he says. “Isabel put a whole bunch of healthy crap in the fridge.”

“That is lucky,” she says, untucking from his side.

He gets up and grabs some stuff, still trying to figure out things like plates and utensils and any kind of cooking gear. The Evans family has graciously donated many items and he has the feeling he might have more now than he’d ever had growing up. Still, he doesn’t know how to use any of it. True, he’s good at frying up food and of all things he’s probably going to start work cooking at the Crash Down since he’s got bills now and all, but if it’s not mixing drinks, he’s not great at it.

Maria seems to know what to do and in short work they manage to make a meal and eat it together. He lets her do all the talking but he doesn’t mind it as much as he might have before. He has a new insight into her now and her voice is more soothing than grating. Not that he really listens to what she’s saying, most of what she says melts into the background of his mind, but it’s comforting to hear.

She has a shift later so she gets ready to go. He walks her to the door and they hesitate in saying goodbye.

He is confused, never quite knowing what she wants, but he puts his hand under her chin and kisses her. She returns it and it’s short, but he still likes how it feels. There’s a brief flash and he sees her looking at the napkin holder he made for her and looking so happy his heart aches for a second.

“That was close, right?” he asks.

“It was perfect,” she says, smiling so brightly he swears he could flash just from that.

He shuts the door behind her and puts his head against it. He is very screwed. What he feels for Maria, it’s stronger than anything he ever remembers feeling and yet he’s going to hide himself from her. He doesn’t see that ending well, but yet somehow it feels like he’s moved forward and grown somehow. He can’t see a way past keeping his true self from her, but he also can’t keep himself from her entirely.

That’s the choice he is making and he will have to live with it, but at least it’s progress. Plus, he knows now, how he feels and what he wants for her. The flashes are strangely addicting and he finds himself craving new insights, new ways to understand this strange person who has managed to make him her own, but he feels it might not be quite right to allow himself to feel those flashes when he’s denying them to her. So he thinks he’ll do his best to keep that from happening, to let their relationship be as human as he can make it. It seems like that’s what she wants anyway, though he’s very clearly not an expert in either human relationships or what Maria actually wants from him.

So, he’s decided. He’s moving forward into the mire of human relationships, taking one step away from his quest for his past, all for the love of one person, one person he’ll open up to with one hand and hide from with the other. It’s all a giant mess, but that’s nothing new for him. 

He straightens up from the door and goes to clean up the mess in the kitchen, a tangible, physical task he can understand and accomplish. It’s time to be done brooding, time to move forward. Michael Guerin, extraterrestrial, has chosen to be in love.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Roswell. The title is by CH Spurgeon. Some dialogue is from the show.
> 
> This was written because it feels like there needs to have been some moment when Michael figured out why Maria couldn’t flash and decided to keep it that way. The episode is structured so that we aren’t sure Michael and Maria can flash until the end when he reveals he did all along, and that really plays into his words and actions in the episode if you look back at it. But I think it also needs to play into their relationship going forward. If he can flash with her, then does he? I’ve decided to make it so he attempts not to. I think that makes sense with his reticence for human connection and also his desire not to let her see inside of him. But after this episode, they’re apparently together again because the next one is her berating him for not treating her like a normal girlfriend, so hopefully this fic also bridges the gap from being very clearly broken up to somehow dating again. This show does a really horrible job at letting you clearly know people’s relationship status.


End file.
